Four Pirates, a Little Lady, and Love
by Technomad
Summary: Rachel, Revy's mischievous little sister, has joined the Lagoon Company...and she's bored! Just as she wishes out loud for something interesting to happen, who should walk in but some old friends from before she showed up?
1. Chapter 1

Four Pirates, a Little Lady, and Love

Chapter 01

a _Black Lagoon_ fic

by Technomad

Rain poured down as a tropic thunderstorm roared over Roanapur. A typhoon had hit the coast some miles away, and although Roanapur had not felt the worst effects of the storm, it was still windy enough to make movement outdoors _interesting_. The streets were all but deserted, and in the lower-lying areas, were flooding. Nobody was out on the streets unless it was necessary. Half the street lights were on; the other half weren't working. Trash was blowing down the streets, and trees had gone down, sometimes on top of some unlucky soul's parked car or through the roof of a building.

The _Black Lagoon_ crew was sitting around the Yellowflag tavern, waiting for the weather to let up. They had been sitting around the office staring at each other, until Dutch had unilaterally declared a day off and offered them drinks down at the Yellowflag. The opportunity to see people other than their co-workers had been very attractive, even without the prospect of drinks. The people who used their services would know to check the Yellowflag if the office was closed.

They weren't the only ones in the tavern. Bao, of course, was behind the bar, smiling at the peaceful, profitable scene in front of him. Dutch, Rock and Benny were playing three-handed pinochle for _baht_*. Revy was in a desultory drinking contest with Sister Eda, who had traded in her trademark nun's habit for her "off-duty" clothes, and looked much less out of place in the Yellowflag than she normally would have. Rachel Lee, Revy's little sister, was discontentedly paging through a back issue of _Soldier of Fortune_ she had brought along from the office.

Some of Boss Chang's men were there as well, quietly playing mah-jongg; the stakes looked very high. Over in a corner, three of Balalaika's Russians were engrossed in a deep discussion, their voices barely audible.

"I'm _bored_," whined Rachel. "I wish something would _happen_! I want some _action!"_

"Shut up and drink your gin," Revy Two-Hands snapped. "When you get to my age, you'll treasure these down-times. That's _if_ you get to my age, _baby sister_!"

Rachel stuck out her tongue at her big sister. "And what age is _that_, Rebecca? The same one as Methusaleh?" Everybody at the table laughed except Revy, who was doing a good imitation of a boiler about to burst.

Some months previously, Revy's little sister Rachel had unexpectedly turned up in Roanapur. She had explained that her mother had been arrested, and she had preferred getting out of her native New York City to another stint in juvie. She had hitchhiked to the West Coast and stowed away on ships until she was in striking distance of Roanapur, since she knew that her older sister was there.

The Lagoon Company had been surprised at her appearance, but had taken her in, and she was now a member of the crew in her own right. Revy hadn't quite known what to do at first, but had settled into her role as "big sister," teaching Rachel the things she needed to know to stay out of trouble. After a few bobbles, like inadvertently cheating a bunch of Balalaika's men out of money in a Florida-swampland scheme, she had found ways to make herself useful, from taking over office-cleaning chores that tended to be neglected, to unobtrusively gathering information. Many people were so used to the sight of street brats that one more didn't register as a possible threat.

Business had been slow, partly due to the stormy weather. The typhoon that had clipped Roanapur was just one of several nasty storms that had hit. The airport had suspended flights in and out, going to sea was out of the question, and everybody was just waiting for the weather to improve. While the Lagoon Company had enough money to get along, they were all aware that making more money was a Good Thing. Expenses went on, whether the _Black Lagoon_ was at sea or not.

Rachel paged through her magazine, restlessly scanning an article about Special Forces in action in the Golden Triangle. "Geez, do these writers ever actually get out here, Rebecca?" She shook her head. "I've found three big mistakes in this article, and I'm only halfway through!"

"Maybe you should write the editors and tell them, Rachel," Revy growled. Giving Sister Eda a hard look, she poured down her glass of rum and slammed it on the table, signalling Bao to bring her a fresh one. "Or maybe you should find something _useful_ to do."

"Yeah, that would be nice. Maybe I can make something interesting happen!" Rachel was getting a little irritated with her sister's peevishness, even though she understood why Revy was cranky. "Let me see…_abracadabra, ala-ka-zam_, I command something interesting to happen _now_!" She stood up, waving her hands and closing her eyes.

The whole bar suddenly went very quiet. Rachel opened her eyes. "Hey, what happened? I was just joking…" Nobody was paying her any mind. Instead, all eyes were riveted on three people who had come in when she had her eyes closed.

Rachel couldn't see much about the newcomers that would provoke what looked, to her, like abject terror. Two women flanked a boy a little older and taller than she was, all of them in rain coats. The tallest woman had an umbrella she had furled over one shoulder, while the other woman and boy had been wearing rain hats. They walked up to the bar, where Bao was staring at them like he was seeing ghosts.

The tallest woman, who seemed to be the spokeswoman for the trio, spoke quietly to Bao, who pointed over to the table where the Lagoon Company and their friends were sitting. She nodded, and led her companions over to the table, with the air of someone who had every right to be there.

Rachel was puzzled. _Why was everybody acting so frightened?_ "Rebecca…who are these people? What do they want with us?" She noticed that Revy's hand was inching toward one of her Cutlasses, and shifted her own position so that her .380 PPK was in easier reach. She and her sister teased each other mercilessly, as befit sisters, but she respected Revy's superior experience and knowledge of their environment. Rachel was a street-wise street brat, and every sense she had was screaming that danger was near. She scanned the room, but the strangers' arrival was the only change visible.

"Good afternoon, Dutch, Benny, Rock, Revy," said the boy, surprising Rachel, who had thought that the tall woman was the leader of the strangers. "It's been a while since we've seen each other, hasn't it?"

Dutch visibly gathered himself together. "Rachel…these are some people we dealt with a couple of times before. This is Garcia Lovelace, head of the Lovelace family of Venezuela, and his maids, Senoritas Roberta Cisneros and Fabiola Iglesias. Garcia, Roberta, Fabiola, this is Rachel Lee. She's Revy's little sister, who joined us a while ago."

"_Buenas dias, mis amigos_," Rachel said. She had picked up a fair amount of Spanish in her stints in juvenile corrections, and had found it useful navigating her native New York slums. "_Bienvenido a Roanapura_."

Garcia's eyes widened. "My, what a polite girl! You aren't much like your sister!"

"Oh, they're more alike than not," Rock commented, with a rueful grin. "She's one apple that didn't fall far from the tree, as you Americans would say."

Rachel was examining the boy closely, and quickly decided she really liked what she saw. He was looking at her, too, as though he'd never seen a girl before. Rachel was suddenly conscious of the fact that she hadn't put much effort into her appearance. _If I'd known that a handsome young guy my own age would show up, I'd have worn my better clothes, and done __something__ with my hair_! Rachel was normally resigned to being dismissed as "just a kid," but that didn't mean she was averse to male company, or didn't miss it sometimes.

She noticed that the tall woman, who seemed to be "Roberta," and her sister were giving each other the evil eye. Rachel hero-worshipped her big sister, and instantly took a dislike to this Roberta person.

Dutch cleared his throat. "So, what brings you three back here? I never thought I'd ever see you around here again after the last time."

To Rachel's surprise, the boy answered, while the two grown women deferred to him. "The Lovelace family has come into conflict with the Cuban _Dirección de Inteligencia. _That's what they call their spy service. They've stolen some technology that we were going to use to revive the Lovelace fortunes, and are planning to use it in a secret compound they've constructed near here. We're here to get it back."

Rachel's eyes went wide. "One kid my age and two maids? How do you plan to do it, ask nicely? Throw teacups at them? Cry until they give you the stuff back?" Her voice trailed off, as she noticed the way all the adults were looking at her. Her sister and friends from the Lagoon Company were trying, too late, to shush her, and most of the other adults in the bar were staring at her like she'd just started juggling nitroglycerine. Bao had ducked out of sight behind the bar, which Rachel knew was a sign that trouble was on the way.

The taller of the two maids…Roberta, that was her name…picked up the umbrella she had leaned by the table. Rachel looked at it carefully for the first time, and nearly fainted. The umbrella concealed a SPAS-12 combat shotgun, and the fabric of the canopy was bulletproof Kevlar. Roberta smiled…or, to put it more correctly, she showed her teeth. Rachel had seen friendlier smiles on hungry sharks.

"Oh, I think we can…reason…with these Cubans, little girl," Roberta purred. "And I can certainly see how _much_ you're like your sister."

*_baht_-Thai money. One _baht_ is worth about 2.5 US cents at the time of this story.

END Chapter 01


	2. Chapter 2

Four Pirates, a Little Lady, and Love

Chapter 02

by Technomad

Dutch had the party adjourn to the Lagoon Company's offices. "I'm not sure we should be talking out here in this place," he explained. "You never know who's listening." Sister Eda had given him a dirty look, but when Dutch returned it, she subsided. Rachel knew that the Church of Violence would be getting a report quickly that the Venezuelans were back in town, as would Chang and Balalaika. It couldn't be prevented, and their help might be needed. She also knew that Balalaika, at least, would be highly displeased if she found she'd been kept in the dark. Rachel shuddered, remembering Balalaika's warning to her after she'd found out that Rachel had inadvertently taken in a bunch of her men with a swampland-in-Florida scam:

_"I do not think you would __like__ the harbor bottom. You meet the __nastiest__ people there."_

Rachel sat back and watched developments. Or, to be more precise, she watched Garcia Lovelace.

For a kid his age, he had lots of poise and confidence. His two maids sat back and let him do the majority of the talking, listening respectfully. For a second, Rachel felt resentful. _How come __he __gets treated that way, while everybody says I'm "just a kid?"_

Garcia was explaining: "You see, one reason coffee…at least,_ good _coffee…is expensive is because the really good stuff comes from a tree that only grows in a few places. We've come up with a way to grow those trees in temperate-zone areas, which would drop the price considerably. The Cubans want that technology, because ever since the USSR went belly-up, they've been floundering financially; their economy depended heavily on Soviet subsidies and Soviet purchases of their sugar."

"Okay, I can see that they'd love to have an exclusive on that sort of thing. However, why would they set up here in Roanapur? It's thousands of miles away from their homeland," Rock commented, with a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette.

"That's precisely why," Garcia explained. "We believe that they're here because they don't want to attract too much attention from US intelligence. Cuba's only about a hundred and forty-four kilometers or so off the US coast, and they're under constant surveillance from aircraft and satellites. Here, though, US coverage is much less all-pervasive." The taller of the two maids scowled, as at some private memories. Rachel wondered what _that_ was all about.

"So you want to hire us?" Dutch got to the point.

"Yes. I've seen the Lagoon Company in action before. If you can get us into range of their headquarters, I believe _we_ can handle things from there."

"You think well of yourself. However, if you get into trouble, you'll expect us to come bail you out, won't you?" That was Rock.

Garcia nodded. "The Cubans we'll be up against, as far as I can ascertain, are not their 'A-Team;' they're a bunch of second-raters. You've seen both Roberta and Fabiola in action before. One big advantage we'll have is surprise. As far as we can tell, they don't know we're anywhere in the vicinity. We landed in Bangkok and took a car into Roanapur. We had to buy the car; for some reason, none of the livery drivers in Bangkok would take us to this town." He gave them all a charming smile. "I can't _possibly_ imagine _why_."

Rachel could. She knew Roanapur's reputation, none better. The last leg of her long journey from New York to Roanapur had been the most difficult, since very few ships anchored there. The port's sinister reputation kept most reputable shippers at a distance.

"Well…we do charge a standard daily rate for straight-up transportation. For combat situations, we charge more." Dutch named a figure, high enough to make Rachel's eyes go wide; luckily, none of the Latin Americans was paying her any mind. She expected this to set off a long, complicated haggle; she had seen these many times, and expected Rock to take over for Dutch; the ex-salaryman generally handled a lot of the financial details, subject to final approval by Dutch.

"_Hecho_! Done!" Rachel couldn't believe her ears. She thought for a second about how much extra money the Lagoon Company stood to make because the Venezuelans hadn't bothered to haggle, and resisted the temptation to stand up and give three rousing cheers. Then it occurred to her that the job they'd just committed to might be quite a bit more dangerous than usual, and felt unaccustomed shivers down her back.

To take her mind off the nagging feeling that they might be heading into something worse than a typical _Lagoon_ mission, she concentrated on Garcia Lovelace. The more she saw of him, the yummier he looked. She fantasized running her hands through his thick blond hair. She'd always liked blue-eyed blonds, and although she hadn't really realized that they could be found in South America, she had to admit that most of the Latinos she'd ever met were from a few countries, and her knowledge was likely to be skewed.

She noticed that the taller of the two maids…the one called "Roberta"…was still glaring at Rebecca, who was returning the glare with interest. Unobtrusively, Rachel worked around so that she could draw her pistol in a hurry. While she knew Rebecca could easily take care of herself, there was always the chance that something could go wrong, and she did _not_ intend to lose her sister, her only kinswoman who was alive and out of prison, to some random tramp from Caracas!

Rebecca didn't notice what she was doing…but _Roberta_ did. Roberta gave her a long, cold, considering look, like she was a piece of meat Roberta was contemplating buying. Rachel shivered. Something about that woman gave her the shuddering creeps. She noticed that Rock had also picked up on the byplay, but very little ever escaped the salaryman's notice. Unobtrusively, Rock shook his head, signalling her to stand down. She wasn't sure about that, but she trusted Rock. She'd seen him calmly negotiating with people who would have normally killed him for existing, and he never lost his cool. Rachel relaxed, but did not completely take her eyes off Roberta.

"Well…meet up with us tomorrow. By then this weather will, hopefully, have cleared up, and we can start making arrangements." With that, Dutch stood up, and so did the Venezuelans. Garcia solemnly shook hands with Dutch, and the South Americans took their leave.

Once they were gone, Rock took Rachel aside. "Rachel, I saw what you were doing. I can understand you wanting to protect your sister; you did very well indeed on the _Cheonji_. However, either of those women is far more dangerous than you're used to dealing with. They could swat you like you were a troublesome insect."

"That's right, Rachel," put in Dutch. "When we first met the older of them, Roberta…she's the taller of the two, the one with glasses…we were keeping Garcia on ice for some people who'd kidnapped him. She walked into the Yellowflag and tore the place apart all by herself. That woman could give the Terminator a really busy, bad time if she wanted to."

"Really?" Rachel's eyes went very wide. She knew that the Yellowflag's customer-base was some of the toughest people in Southeast Asia, and she, herself, wouldn't have dreamed of starting trouble there without at least the 82nd Airborne along as back-up. "What did she do when she found out you had Garcia?"

"Oh, Lord, what _didn't_ she do?" Benny took up the tale. "She chased our car down on foot, shot Revy in the shoulder, and then she and Revy got into a gunfight that it took Balalaika and all of Hotel Moscow to break up. Then Revy still wanted some payback for that wound, so she and Roberta had it out with fists until they managed a mutual knockout."

"I still say I _won_ that one," Revy snarled. "Lest we forget…_I_ was fighting hurt, and that maid bitch _wasn't_!"

"Well, Garcia really impressed Balalaika," Dutch went on. "After the whole thing, Garcia…who was about nine or ten at the time…told Balalaika to her face that Roberta was his maid, and he'd see to her well-being. Balalaika was so pleased with him that she ordered your boyfriend Sergeant Boris to help take care of her wounds and see that they got safely to the airport."

"_Did_ she…and he is _not_ my _boyfriend_!" Rachel turned pink as the rest of the Lagoon Company laughed. Her crush on the scarfaced Russian was common knowledge among them, although they never spoke of it where outsiders could hear. "Just because I have a due appreciation of his intelligence, multi-faceted personality, multiple talents, and other good qualities does not make him my boyfriend!" She suddenly grinned. "Now, this Garcia Lovelace, on the other hand, looks far more attainable. He's about my age, doesn't seem to have a girlfriend, and he's one of the yummiest things I've seen in a long time!"

"He's just like every other boy in the world," Revy growled. "He just wants one thing. All he'll want is to get into your pants, and once that's done, he'll be off like a bat out of Hell, leaving you all alone."

Dutch began to laugh, and Benny and Rock joined in. "Revy, listen to yourself!" Benny chortled. "You sound just like someone's mother!"

Revy looked utterly horrified. "Oh my God, am I getting…_old_?" Rachel opened her mouth, only to intercept a poisonous glare from her older sister. "Rachel, if you dare say _one goddamned word_, I'll personally thrash you so thoroughly that you'll be eating off a mantelpiece for the next six months!"

"Seriously, Rachel, I can understand why you'd be attracted, but with those two maids of his around, I'd be very careful with Garcia Lovelace. The younger maid, Fabiola, isn't _quite_ as dangerous as Roberta is…Roberta wasn't called the Bloodhound of Florencia for nothing. Before she joined the Lovelaces, she was once one of the _FARC_'s most dangerous terrorists, under her birth name of 'Rosarita Cisneros.' Even so, Fabiola's more than dangerous enough by herself, even without her mentor, to deserve cautious treatment."

"I wonder if either of them would be willing to give me pointers? Not that I'm dissatisfied with the training I'm getting from you or Hotel Moscow, but a girl can't know too much about these things?" mused Rachel, a thoughtful expression on her face.

Dutch, Revy, Rock and Benny looked at each other ruefully. "She's so like you it's scary, Revy," Dutch finally remarked.


	3. Chapter 3

Four Pirates, a Little Lady, and Love

Chapter 03

by Technomad

_Foreign Base "Che Guevara," Democratic Kampuchea_

"This had better work," Mario LaGuerta muttered. He looked around uneasily. The Kampuchean forest was not unlike those of his native Cuba, but he could sense that he was nowhere near home. The birdsongs were different, the air smelled different…every little detail was different. To someone not used to the tropics, the differences would have seemed inconsequential, but Mario LaGuerta had spent his life mainly in tropical and sub-tropical areas.

"Trust me, it'll work," smiled the chief of the scientists they had escorted from Cuba, Dr. Angel Gonzales. "The Lovelaces' own scientists did exemplary work. With this, Cuba will have a new source of foreign exchange, at long last."

Dr. Gonzales was supervising a group of scientists who were putting the final touches on the Lovelaces' secret development. LaGuerta and his men were providing security; the area was not under anybody's direct control, and there was always the possibility of a firefight. Many of the locals were desperate enough to think that the scraps of this-and-that they could have looted from the base were valuable. LaGuerta had been in many scary, sad places, but this was one of the worst. Some of his men were spooked, both by the distance from Cuba and the feel of the place.

"It's haunted, Comrade," they complained. "We can feel the spirits…the unquiet dead…left over from the reign of that madman Pol Pot." While Cuba discouraged it, many of his men believed in _Santeria_, and they had started to perform rites intended to propitiate angry ghosts. LaGuerta left them to it; his own private opinion was that the regime's hostility to religion, be it Catholicism or _Santeria_, was a stupidity that stirred up needless hostility among the people.

_Let them have their beliefs_, LaGuerta thought. Of course, he didn't say so out loud; he had no desire to end up on the Isle of Pines. Open criticism of the regime was still a one-way ticket to trouble, and a lifetime spent under the Castros' dictatorship had conditioned him well.

"And those two children…the ones we had assigned to us…also make us nervous," said one of the soldiers, a Private Garcia. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and LaGuerta saw that one of the children in question had sauntered over to see how things were going.

"Hello, mister," said an angelic-looking blonde girl in an old-fashioned dress. "_Dragul meu frate_ and I wanted to see how you were getting along."

"Fine! _Bueno_! Never better!" LaGuerta was no coward, but something about those two set every alarm bell in his mind screaming warnings of dreadful danger. They seemed so serene, so beautiful…and he sensed that they were deadlier than any snake or shark.

"_Bine_! We'll leave you to it!" With a tinkling laugh, the girl turned away, toward the hut she shared with her brother. Her white-blonde hair rippled in the wind as she skipped away. He could hear her singing, her voice like an angel's, and he shuddered.

"_Madre de todos los chingadas_, those two give me the screaming creeps! What did Havana think we needed them for?" muttered Dr. Gonzales.

"I've heard that they were…_created_…originally by the Romanians. Something about countering a program the Italians had, where orphaned kids were turned into killer cyborgs. The Romanians did it in collaboration with the Soviets, and these two are the only ones who've survived this long."

"You mean they aren't human?"

"They were meant to be the ultimate killing machines. _Better_ than human, although not long-lasting. Most of the subjects of the Romanians' experiments died not long after the Ceausescus' regime went down. These two escaped somehow, though, and they've earned a living as hired killers ever since." Politically incorrect or not, LaGuerta crossed himself, the gesture offering him some slight comfort. "I don't know how the intelligence boys came across them, and I don't want to know!"

Roanapur, Thailand

"Do you know where this base is?" asked Dutch. He had a bunch of charts and maps of the Roanapur area and adjacent parts of Thailand and Cambodia spread out all over the Lagoon Company's offices.

"No, not offhand. We know that they're here…our contacts were quite specific that they were not far from Roanapur…but we don't have the place pinpointed." Garcia peered at the maps, with Roberta and Fabiola behind him.

"We've got lots of contacts around here. I think we can find where the Cubans are." Rock pointed out. "They can't be operating their base in a complete vacuum. They'd need to buy supplies, and that would get noticed."

"Good point, Rock. Do you think you can find out where they're likely to be?"

"I can make inquiries. The Rip-off Church would be a good place to go. Wanna come along, Revy?"

"Nah," Revy replied. "The little voices in my head said it was a good day to stay home and clean my pistols." Everybody looked at her, and she grinned wickedly. "What? You all think I'm crazy anyway…I figured I might's well go for it!" She made a "crazy" face and rolled her eyes.

Rock caught Dutch's eye, and they both sadly shook their heads, tapping their foreheads with their fingers.

"I'll come along," piped up Rachel. "I'm bored, and a walk in town sounds like just the ticket!"

"Not a bad idea. Most people in this place know better than to bother Rock, but remember what happened when those Norks jumped him? I'd breathe a little easier if he had a gun with him, but he won't carry one. Also, if trouble does happen, whoever starts it won't be too likely to realize that you're a threat till too late."

Rachel nodded, proud to be given real responsibility. She drew her Walther PPK, checking the chamber to make sure it was loaded, and patted her pockets to make sure she had several spare magazines as well. "Come on, Rock…time's a-wastin', as we say back home!" She grabbed Rock's arm and towed the unresisting salaryman toward the door.

Once they were gone, Roberta said, to nobody in particular: "What a sweet, demure, obedient little girl she is."

"Hey!" Garcia put his hands on his hips. "Don't say mean things about her! It's not her fault she grew up in a tough place!"

Dutch exchanged glances with Roberta and Fabiola. All three of them suddenly looked very knowing.

000

Rock was glad to get out of the office. Among other things, Revy was cranky at having to work with "Glasses Bitch," or "Four-Eyes," her pet names for Roberta. Rock could also see easily that Roberta was not happy about working alongside Revy; the Colombian woman emphatically didn't approve of Revy's swearing, her heavy, open drinking, or her…exuberant…style of dress. Getting away from them was a relief.

Rachel was not Revy, and never _would_ be Revy, but she wasn't bad company. In some ways, she was a bit of an improvement on Revy…she was much less volatile, and willing to listen to what Rock said. She had taken all of the Lagoon Company as teachers, and in Rock's private opinion, she was a quick learner. He mentally deplored the fact that she had apparently not done well in her schools back in New York City.

Rachel bounced along beside him, enjoying the day. She had a talent for sucking the maximum enjoyment out of anything she was doing, whether conning the _Black Lagoon_ in and out of harbor under Dutch's critical, knowing eye, target practice in the dump, or just going out for some shopping with her sister's boyfriend.

As they passed a small liquor store, Rachel asked: "Wait for me a second, will you, Rock?" Before Rock could say anything, she ducked into the store, and came out a few minutes later with a paper bag under her arm. "Thanks. We were running low on gin, so I figured I'd pick some up."

"We're running low on gin, Rachel, because _someone_ keeps _drinking it_. And we know who that is, don't we?" Rachel was the only member of the Lagoon Company who favored gin; Revy liked Bacardi rum, Dutch and Benny both preferred whisky, and Rock himself wasn't particularly fussy. "Just don't be swigging the whole thing at once. Remember how sick you got?" The last time she'd had as much gin as she thought she wanted, Rachel had spent much of the night throwing up, according to a very amused Revy, and had dragged around the next day looking like death warmed-over.

Rachel scowled at Rock, who reacted with with his usual equanimity. Having faced off more than once with an angry Revy, Rock was not at all frightened of her thirteen-year-old sister. "Look, it's not my fault or yours, but right now you're smaller than we are, so it takes less booze to get to you. Once you've got your full growth, you'll probably be able to drink even with Revy or even me." In his previous life in Japan, Rock had been a "salaryman"…a white-collar worker for a corporation…and heavy drinking with co-workers was expected. Not long after meeting Revy, she had challenged him to a drinking duel, expecting to be able to humiliate this white-shirted office drone, and Rock had taken considerable pleasure in showing her just how ignorant of Japanese ways she was.

By this time, they were at the Rip-Off Church. They were greeted by Father Rico. "Ah, welcome! Good to see you again, Rock, Rachel! I'll tell Sis you're here!"

As the priest turned to leave, Rachel muttered: "So yummy, and sworn to leave women alone. God must hate us poor women." Rock shushed her. He had little understanding of Catholicism, and knew that the church was mainly a front for weapons smuggling, but he didn't care for the idea of Rachel criticizing their hosts' ways.

END Chapter 03


	4. Chapter 4

Four Pirates, a Little Lady, and Love

Chapter 04

Church of Violence, Roanapur, Thailand

A few minutes later, Sister Eda came in. She'd apparently been in the shower when Rock and Rachel arrived; all she seemed to have on was a pair of flip-flops, a towel wrapped around her covering her from her chest down to just past her crotch, and her trademark pink sunglasses. When she saw Rock standing there, she gave him a big sultry smile.

"Well, _hello_ there, dreamboat! Finally come to your senses and ditched that crazy bitch? That's good news!"

Rock, by this time, was inured to Eda's teasing, and paid it no mind. "No, Sister Eda, Revy and I are still together. We came by to find out if there's been any unusual activity lately…people buying supplies that aren't normally buying, things like that. Oh, and if you've got any aerial or satellite photos of the Roanapur area, and the adjacent areas of Kampuchea, we'd like to dicker a price for them."

"Pity, that," Eda purred. "I could show you a very good time." She undulated up to Rock, close enough that her towel-covered breasts were just barely touching the front of his white shirt. "Or are you so whipped that you can't even think about a little variety?"

Sister Eda had forgotten Rachel. Suddenly, she remembered, when she felt the cold muzzle of a pistol against her side. Rachel snarled: "Back off my sister's man, _bitch_, or _I'll_ give you a .380 ACP hysterectomy!"

Eda's lip curled. "You're playing in the big leagues, little girl. You don't know what you're talking about, and you don't have the nerve to do it."

"As it happens, Eda, she _does_ know what she's talking about. Do you remember the raid on that North Korean ship a few months back?" Rock stepped back a little, giving Rachel a clearer field of fire. He trusted her, but he also knew that a bullet was the ultimate wild-card.

"Yeah, I heard about that. Balalaika and her men really did a number on those North Koreans. Serves the bastards right, too. Are you saying that _you_ were in on that somehow?" Behind her pink sunglasses, Eda's eyes went wide.

"She was. Balalaika gave her an important part of the assignment. She was the first one aboard the _Cheonji_, and she and Revy were in several fights with the North Koreans. One of them stabbed Rachel and she went down, but she'd shot a good few of them before that."

"Well. Maybe I _have_ underestimated you." Eda stepped back, and suddenly was all business. "Okay, you say you want information about unusual patterns of resupply, and aerial or sat photos of this area. What's it worth to you?" She, Rock and Rachel all sat down just as Sister Yolanda came in, along with a servant bearing a tray with tea and cookies on it.

"Ah, it's so nice to see you again, dear boy!" Sister Yolanda had always had a soft spot from Rock. "And little Rachel! You're growing prettier every time I see you, dear! You look more like your sister every day!"

"She's more like her stupid sister than you'd think," grumbled Eda. "Did you hear what went on earlier?"

"You mean, when you tried coming on to Mr. Okajima, and little Rachel pulled a gun on you?" Sister Yolanda shook her head sadly. "I must say, I would not have expected such…_enterprise_… from a girl her age."

"Oh, that's not the only thing she can do," Rock smiled reminiscently. "One of her first exploits, not long after she hit Roanapur and got taken in by the Lagoon Company, was to start up a Florida swampland sales scheme. Unfortunately for her, she ended up cheating a bunch of Hotel Moscow members and Revy had to beg their lives from Balalaika. Luckily, I think Balalaika was more amused than anything else. She did warn Rachel not to sail too close to the wind, though."

"These days, some of her men are training me," Rachel piped up. "They say I've got lots of natural talent. I'd say it comes from growing up in my old 'hood in New York. I've learned ever so many neat things since I've been here. And I teach _them_ things, too. Wanna see how to play three-card monte?"

"Three-card monte?" Sister Yolanda leaned forward, her single eye wide. "You mean 'find-the-lady?'"

"Sure…I've heard it called that, now that I think about it. It's a good way to raise money, when cash is short. I can always find suckers to play it with me. Lots of people in this town think it's easy to cheat a kid. I have to split my take with Balalaika, but for that, she lets one of the _Vysotniki_ come along and keep things in order at the game."

"So you can do piracy, land fraud, and three-card monte, and you're learning seamanship and how to smuggle from Dutch, and how to shoot from Balalaika's men?" Sister Yolanda shook her head wonderingly. "What else can you do?"

Rachel smiled. "I'm not as good a shot or in a fight as my big sis yet, but that's because I'm younger than she is. However, I can hold my own if I have to. My friends and I used to mug people and roll drunks, and I can still do that right quick. I did B&Es when I was at home in New York; being small is an advantage there; I could wiggle in and disable alarms and open doors for my dad's friends. One of them started teaching me how to open safes, but I had to split out of NYC before I got very good at it. I do have the basics, though. And Mommy had me helping out on her phony paper schemes."

"Never, in all my days, have I heard of such a young girl with such an extensive criminal resume," marvelled Sister Yolanda. "Tell me, my dear: If you ever get tired of the Lagoon Company, would you consider a career with the Church?"

Rachel visibly thought about it. "I don't know…if I do decide to part company with the Lagoon Company, though, I'll be sure to look you up. The arms trade is one that's never going to go away."

"True enough. Now, about these photographs…" Sisters Yolanda and Eda began talking business with Rock, while Rachel sat back and watched, learning how these negotiations were done.

000

Foreign Base "Che Guevara," Democratic Kampuchea

"This whole project stinks to high heaven," Private Garcia muttered. His closest buddy, Corporal Menendez, nodded. "I'd think it would work a lot better in Cuba, instead of clear around the world from there."

"I know. I want to be back in Cuba. Even that place is better than here." Corporal Menendez looked around. "And I think this whole deal's a scheme to line our commanders' pockets."

"_Bienvenido a Cuba_!" Garcia clapped sarcastically. "If you haven't figured out yet, my friend, that the whole '_Revolucion_' was nothing but a giant scam, I'd like to congratulate you on your recent arrival to this mundane world. Tell me, are the skies on Mars really pink?" Menendez scowled. He had been brought up, unlike Private Garcia, in a family that still believed in Castro's promised paradise-on-earth, even though the promises had worn a trifle thin in the nearly-forty years since Batista's departure.

"Castro said that this was all for us…for the common workers…" Menendez snarled. Garcia smelled his breath, and stepped back. Some of the men had been cooking up some awful rotgut they called "jungle juice," and it smelled like Corporal Menendez had fallen into the stuff and gone for a swim. "I'm going to go talk to Colonel Ramos about this!"

Before Garcia could stop him, Menendez had stalked off toward the colonel's hut. Garcia looked after him, shaking his head. He hoped that the colonel was in a forgiving mood. Cuba's egalitarian rhetoric was strictly for the foreigners and fools who still believed in the Revolucion. He, Private Garcia, would keep his head down and maybe the colonel would be lenient.

Menendez was shouting at the colonel's hut, and several other soldiers had stopped working to stare at his outburst. Suddenly the two blond children had appeared, as if summoned. Menendez began shouting at them, but before he could react, the boy had pulled out a huge axe, and the girl had produced a Thompson submachine gun. Menendez screamed and turned to run, but before he could get away, the boy had swung his axe, hamstringing both his legs. He fell, and the girl stood over him, straddling him as she systematically emptied a fifty-round drum magazine into his body. Even after he stopped twitching, she kept firing, only stopping when the gun clicked empty.

"And that is why we don't want to show discontent," Garcia heard a voice behind him, and turned to see Dr. Gonzales. "The political police find those two very useful. They have blanket permission to kill anybody they think are insufficiently loyal."

"How long have they been in the political police?" Garcia couldn't help asking the question.

"Some little while now. They were out here in Asia, on an assignment that went sour, and only escaped by feigning death successfully. They made their way to a Cuban embassy and explained what they were, and were in Havana in a few hours. They've generally been used to exterminate enemies of the regime. They have full permission to kill anybody they feel is disloyal or not enthusiastic enough; Fidel Castro himself praised their work."

"Well, as from now, I'm enthusiastic! I'm fired up! Hurray for our work!" Private Garcia hurried back to his post, hoping that the twins had not seen him goofing off. He had no interest in being their next plaything. What he'd seen them doing to Corporal Menendez would gag a maggot!

END Chapter 04


	5. Chapter 5

Four Pirates, a Little Lady, and Love

Chapter 05

by Technomad

_Black Lagoon Courier Company offices, Roanapur, Thailand_

Some time later, Rachel and Rock came back to the Lagoon Company's offices, with several thick manila envelopes. Rock opened them and spread the contents out on a table. "Here we go. These are the latest satellite pictures of this area, and the nearby areas of Kampuchea." Everybody gathered around to see.

"Okay, _there's_ Roanapur. The harbor's unmistakable." Dutch began pointing things out. "Which means that the Kampuchean border is _here_." He took a pen and marked it in on the photograph. "Anybody see anything that looks out-of-the-ordinary there?"

"I see _one_ thing that looks out-of-the-ordinary," Revy remarked, fixing her little sister with a gimlet eye. "Rachel, you're going to put that gin into the liquor cabinet right _now_, and _lock it up_! Do you hear me, young lady? I catch you sneaking nips before sundown, and your ass is going to be so sore you won't be able to sit down for a week!"

Rachel whined: "But, _Rebecca_…" to no avail. Under her sister's stern gaze, she opened the liquor cabinet, put in her gin bottle, and shut it, spinning the lock so that she couldn't just open it. She gave the adults a mutinous glare. "If anybody touches my gin, I won't be very happy about it!"

"Nobody's going to touch your gin without your permission, Rachel," snapped Revy, while everybody else tried to suppress their grins, "so get back over here, and, while you're at it, _civilize up_, young lady! We have cash customers here who aren't interested in your adolescent dramas!"

Rachel came back, her snit forgotten as she stared at the photos and maps. Over her head, Revy found herself staring into Roberta's eyes. Roberta winked, and whispered: "It's a hard age to deal with. I know what you're going through!"

Revy's eyes went wide, as she found herself sharing common ground with "Glasses Bitch" for the first time, ever. Rock saw the byplay, and smiled to himself as he leaned over the table to look more closely at the sat photos. Then his eyes narrowed. "What is this? It doesn't show on the maps, but it looks like a fairly extensive facility. Anybody recognize what it is?"

Everybody crowded closer to look. Finally, Roberta cleared her throat.

"That's a Cuban camp. I recognize the layout. Back when I was with FARC, I was trained in a similar camp. The style is quite unique."

"Where, exactly, is this camp?" Dutch and Rock began comparing the photo with large-scale maps of the area. "It looks like it's on the Kampuchean side of the border, about twenty klicks away from the nearest Thai territory. It's on a river…which river is it, and is it navigable? At least the _Lagoon_ can go places that real deep-sea ships can't…" Dutch mused.

Meanwhile, Rachel found herself at loose ends. Her own part in the proceedings would come, if it did, later. She looked around, and found herself staring into Garcia Lovelace's wide blue eyes. Mentally, Rachel ran her tongue over her lips. _Yummy_…Rachel had no illusions about the facts of life between men and women, despite her young age. Some of the girls she'd been locked up with during her last times in juvie had been full-fledged prostitutes, and had alternated between loudly pitying her for her unwillingness to go on the streets with them and sharing war stories about their experiences. Even so, Rachel was enthusiastically heterosexual, and approved completely of the male of the species. Being one of two girls in an otherwise all-male group was exactly to her taste, even with Rebecca having warned her off flirting with Rock, and Dutch and Benny also out of the question.

And Garcia was such a handsome young man! She looked him over carefully. He was doing the same to her, and from what Rachel could see, he liked what he saw as much as she did.

"So, Garcia," Rachel ventured, noticing that the adults were more-or-less ignoring the younger folk, "ever been to New York?"

"Of course I have! I've been there many times, with my father. Are you from there?"

"Sure am! Me and Rebecca both were born and grew up there! Mott Street forever!" Rachel grinned. "Bet you don't know where Mott Street is!"

"Isn't that in Manhattan's Chinatown?" Garcia smiled at Rachel's startled expression. "Some of my father's business partners were Chinese-American businessmen, and they'd treat us to dinners at some of the Chinatown Chinese restaurants."

"You missed out on the _good _stuff," Rachel said. "For real good Chinese food, you don't want to go to the big, expensive places. Those places cater to tourists, and the food they serve isn't always really Chinese. For the real stuff, you should try some of the little local eateries where the local people go to eat. Besides, those big fancy places with all the bling are generally 'way overpriced."

"I'll keep that in mind," Garcia said. "What did you do there? Did you work in a restaurant?"

"Sometimes, usually on a work-for-meals basis," Rachel explained. "But a lot of what I did was the sort of stuff that would get me run in right quick if the cops caught me."

"Why am I not surprised?" murmured Garcia. Then he grinned. "Ever get out to other parts of town?"

As Rachel began to explain just how she had lived, Revy looked over at her and grinned, winking at Rock, who had also noticed the byplay. Revy had a pretty good opinion of Garcia Lovelace, for all that their early acquaintance had not been too friendly, and she knew that Rachel could take care of herself. Besides, the thought of what "Glasses Bitch" would think of _her_ precious Garcia crushing on Revy's little sister made her feel gleefully malicious.

By this time, the Cubans' camp had been located definitely. It was on a navigable river, and had an airstrip near it. The photos didn't show any airplanes at the strip, but that didn't mean that there wouldn't be any at other times.

"At least we can bring the _Black Lagoon_ in close," Dutch mused. "We can hit at them before they know what's coming, that is, if we're lucky at all."

"We'll need to make sure that they don't have air surveillance in effect," said Fabiola. "After all, the _Lagoon_'s pretty distinctive."

"Let's look at ways to disguise her. If she looks like a normal local fishing boat or something like that, they might not be able to tell what's going on until too late," Rock remarked. "We can put nets and things like that over the torpedoes. The Black Lagoon's about the size of a small fishing boat, and that'll help."

Revy tuned out of the conversation; this sort of thing wasn't her area of expertise at all. She trusted Dutch in matters of seamanship, just as he did her when it came down to firefights. She glanced up at Roberta, and noticed that the Colombian woman was watching Garcia, who was busy whispering to a bright-eyed Rachel.

"I think Garcia's seen something he likes," Revy murmured, wondering just what sort of response she'd provoke. She didn't think that the Latin American would react violently, but a Glare of Death was quite possible, and would have amused Revy enormously. She still hadn't forgiven Roberta for shooting her, or for fighting her to a draw the first time they'd met.

"If it goes someplace, your sister will be one lucky girl," Roberta answered softly. "Garcia knows how to make a woman happy."

Revy raised one eyebrow, thought about asking just how Roberta knew about _that_…and then felt herself blushing as the answer came to her. She had always thought she was unshockable, but _this_ was completely unexpected!

_Foreign Base "Che Guevara," Democratic Kampuchea_

Corporal Menendez' death had had an effect on morale. The usual cameraderie among the Cuban soldiers guarding the base was gone, replaced by a palpable sense of fear. Conversation was kept to the bare minimum needed to keep things going, and the mess tent was deadly quiet. Private Garcia thought that even the snoring at night had been cut down.

Colonel Ramos was pleased, though. He strutted about like a rooster in a henyard, smiling. He apparently thought that the men's quiet behavior was evidence of newfound fervor for the _Revolucion_. Anywhere he went, the blond children were not far behind, the girl with her Thompson and the boy with his axe.

The scientific staff were just as frightened as the soldiers. Dr. Gonzales' hands trembled whenever he had to talk to Colonel Ramos, and the other scientists had more-or-less selected him as their spokesman. They avoided dealing with the Colonel as much as possible, pleading pressure of work.

_At least __that's__ going well_, Private Garcia thought. From what he could overhear and piece together, the project they had been sent to work on was making great progress. The scientific discovery that had been taken from the capitalist exploiter Lovelace clan would bring in great amounts of foreign currency for Cuba, possibly even replacing the Soviet funding that had dried up after the Soviet Union fell.

Private Garcia had always wondered, down deep where nobody could tell that he was doing it, why the government's promises somehow never seemed to pan out. He had heard enough from his parents and others who remembered how things were before the Revolucion to know that life was harder since Castro's rise to power, and he suspected strongly that it wasn't all the fault of the wicked, evil _Yanquis_ and their embargo.

_We've got the whole rest of the world to trade with, so why are we so poor?_ That was the sort of question that Private Garcia knew better than to ever, ever ask. He had no desire to end up on the Isle of Youth, as the Isle of Pines had been renamed after the _Revolucion_. Other people who had asked inconvenient questions had been hauled in by the police, and some of them, he had never seen or heard from again. Asking questions about them was discouraged strongly.

As he walked the perimeter of the base, he sighed softly to himself, looking out at the tropic forests, so like home. If it hadn't been so far from home, and such an alien country, he'd have been sorely tempted to go over the fence and try to make a break for it.

END Chapter 05


	6. Chapter 6

Four Pirates, a Little Lady…and Love?

Chapter Six

by Technomad

Coast of the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea

The _Black Lagoon_ slowly nosed up the turbid river. She had been reconfigured from stem to stern, and looked very little like her usual self. She was festooned with netting, and looked very like the small craft used by local fishermen.

At the helm, Dutch expertly conned the ship. In waters this tricky, he trusted nobody else with his beloved PT boat. He was wearing local disguise; black pajamas and a conical straw hat, and from a distance, looked local enough to pass. Up in the prow, Rock kept watch, squatting low on the foredeck in a similar disguise.

Revy, Rachel, Garcia, Fabiola and Roberta were on the main deck. Much to Rachel's amusement, the Latin American women had put up stiff resistance at first to doffing their maids' uniforms in favor of local-style clothing.

"But we're _maids_! We're proud of what we are! How can you ask such a thing of us?" The squawking had gone on and on, until Garcia had quietly ordered the women to do as they were told.

"These people work and live around here, and they know the place much better than we do. I think we'd better follow their directions." At this, both maids had blushed, curtsied to Garcia, and retired to change clothes. Rachel gave Garcia a considering look.

"Man alive, how do you _do_ that? I would never get away with ordering Rebecca around like that! She'd whip my ass till my nose bled buttermilk!"

"That's because Garcia is their _employer_, while you are my _annoying little sister_, who is still liable to correction when you start getting above your station, Rachel." Rachel jumped, not having realized that Revy had been standing behind her listening to every word with great amusement. Whirling around, Rachel gave Revy a poisonous glare.

"Just keep in mind, sister dear, that _I'm _liable to be the one picking out a _nursing home_ for you!" At this, Revy laughed, loud and long.

"Oh, _really_? Tell me, Rachel, what do you think the chances of either of us living _that_ long are?" Revy had to pause to wipe tears of laughter from her face. "'Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse' was always my motto, and, I think, yours too! The only nursing home _I'll_ ever see will be the potter's field!" She stopped, shocked, at the expression on Rachel's face. "Rachel…Rachel! I didn't mean to upset you!" Then she staggered back as her little sister tackled her, hugging her as hard as she could. "Rachel! I didn't mean it that way! It's just that we live dangerous lives! I don't count on seeing old age!" Involuntarily, Revy hugged her little sister back. "Don't cry! I know if I do get to be old enough to not be able to take care of myself, you'll do a good job of looking out for me!"

Wiping tears away, Rachel let her sister go. "And when we're old ladies, Rebecca, we can go out after the sort of people who target old ladies!" She grinned wickedly. "Be _vewwy, vewwy_ quiet…we're hunting _muggers! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!"_ Her expression turned somber. "Remember Mrs. Yang from down the street?"

"Yeah. I always said that was a damn sin and a shame. I mean, if you're going to go in for crime, at least show some _pride_! Putting an old lady into intensive care for the five bucks in her pocketbook…that's just _low_!" Revy looked rather grim. "God knows, I was always a thief, but at least I had some pride, and went after targets worth taking down!"

"I know. Why risk juvie, or prison, over so little?" Rachel noticed how Garcia was looking at her. "Look, Garcia…Rebecca and I are slum kids. Life's a lot different there. It's a struggle for survival. Why do you think I can handle Roanapur so easily?" She hoped she hadn't lost the boy's interest; to Rachel's surprise, Garcia Lovelace's good will had started to matter to her.

"She knows what she's talking about, Garcia," said Roberta, who had come out in time to hear the last bit of conversation. "I grew up in the _barrios_ myself, and life gets rough there. One reason I joined FARC was to try to make things better." Roberta looked pensive. "In those places, a weak person, or an old person, is a target unless it's known they have family or friends who'll take action if they're harmed."

"I see." Garcia looked very thoughtful. "Thank you. You've given me a lot to think about. If this op goes as planned, I'll want to talk with you afterward."

Foreign Base "Che Guevara," Democratic Republic of Kampuchea

Private LaGuerta was on guard duty when the fishing boat came by. He paid no particular attention. Locals, and their fishing boats, were part of the scenery.

"That boat looks familiar," said a sweet, bell-like voice, and Private LaGuerta's spine froze when he realized who had spoken. He turned slowly, not wishing to give offense. The two strange children that Havana had assigned to "help" them had been known to react with insane levels of violence to what they considered affronts.

"How is that, _senorita_?" If he'd had butter in his mouth, it would have frozen solid.

"After _dragul miu frate_ was hurt in Roanapur, I had to leave town in a hurry, and ended up getting passage on a courier boat. There was a very nice man on that boat…" The angelic-looking blonde girl sighed. "He wanted to convince me that there was more to life than killing people, and told me that the world could be a beautiful place for such as me."

"What did you say to that?" Despite himself, LaGuerta was curious. He knew very little about the boy and girl…

"Why, I offered myself to him sexually. I thought that was the only reason an adult would be nice to me."

LaGuerta nearly fainted dead away. He had a little sister that would be just about the age of this girl, and the thought of anybody meddling with her enraged him. _What had __happened__ to this girl, to make her so matter-of-fact about such things?_

"In any case," the blonde girl went on, oblivious to LaGuerta's shock, "when we got to Pangkal Pinang, I got off the boat…and was shot almost immediately by the man who was supposed to pick me up. Luckily, _dragul miu frate_ and I can both fake death very convincingly. Once we were in the morgues, we escaped, joined up, and made our way to the Cuban embassy."

"But how did you survive being shot?"

"We both have many, many modifications. At the orphanage, we were modified extensively by the old Romanian government, to counter an Italian program that created unstoppable cyborg assassins. We were the only ones who survived, and after the fall of Ceausescu, we were picked up by the Sicilians, who foresaw uses for us."

LaGuerta's eyes went wide as realization hit him. _So that was how they could do the things they did!_ He hadn't been able to believe the sheer strength the twins had shown, or their skill with weapons. If they really were cyborgs, a lot of things were explained.

_Black Lagoon_, Coast of Democratic Republic of Kampuchea

"Well, here we are," said Dutch. The Black Lagoon was nosed in against an abandoned wharf. Benny and Rock, in local guise, were busily making the boat fast. Dutch nodded approvingly. Neither of them had been born to the sea, but both of them had learned quickly, and they were now nearly…_nearly_…up to his demanding standards. He had told them, many times, that while they had to worry about enemies such as rival criminals or the police, their greatest enemy of all was "that bitch, the sea." The sea was impersonal, and utterly unforgiving, and would suck them down in a second if they made a mistake.

Roberta, Fabiola, Revy, Rachel and Garcia all came ashore. Revy gave Rachel and Garcia doubtful looks, but she remembered that both young people could handle themselves well; she decided that what with her own background, she had no room to talk.

"Ready for a fight, Glasses Bitch?" she asked. Roberta gave her a long, cool, appraising look. Revy felt rather like a slice of meat on a counter, being looked over by a butcher. Involuntarily, she shuddered slightly. Revy was no coward, but neither was she a fool, no matter what some people thought. And she knew just how dangerous Roberta could be.

"Oh, I'm always up for a good fight, dear," Roberta purred, her voice low so that only the two of them could hear her clearly. "Don't worry. If you falter, Fabiola and I can handle things. You needn't be afraid of the nasty Cubans."

"Afraid? Me? The only thing I'm afraid of is having to tote _your_ lard ass out of there after you've fainted, _Senorita _Fatty Pants!"

At this crack, Roberta's eyes went very wide. "Care to back up that brag, _Senorita Boca Grande_? Tell you what…you and I can have a competition on who kills the most enemies. Loser buys dinner once we're back in town."

"I'd enjoy to risk that. And to make things more interesting, loser has to serve dinner to the winner. _Wearing a French maid costume_!" Revy smiled maliciously. "I'm being _nice_, you see…that'll make your inevitable humiliation easier on you!"

"Don't count your dinners before they're served, _senorita_. Seeing _you_ at my beck and call, wearing one of those frilly fetish outfits, will be such fun! _Hecho_!" With that, Roberta turned and began seeing to her weapons. Revy also began checking her guns.

Rachel and Garcia had been watching the byplay, along with Rock, who had come up while Revy was busy bickering with Roberta. Rachel turned to Garcia, and they both shook their heads sadly, tapping their foreheads.

"Are you two ready?" Rock asked.

"Ready as we'll ever be, Senor Rock," Garcia answered.

"Ready, eager and rarin' to go, Rock!" Rachel gave her friend a sunny smile.

"Then let's go!" The little group headed into the forest, in the direction of the Cuban base.

END Chapter 06


	7. Chapter 7

Four Pirates, a Little Lady…and Love?

Chapter 07

Outside perimeter, Base "Che Guevara," Democratic Kampuchea

Side by side, Garcia Lovelace and Rachel Lee wriggled forward through the thick underbrush, to the edge of the cleared zone around the perimeter of the Cuban base. They peered cautiously out at the wire fence that surrounded the camp. The lights were on, but the fence itself was unlit, and there were no guards in sight.

Rachel gave Garcia a hand signal they had worked out, and they scurried forward, keeping to the shadows. Garcia squinted at an electronic device Benny had rigged up before they left Roanapur. "Looks okay, Rachel. No intrusion-detection systems, at least none that this gadget can find."

Rachel grinned, looking very like her sister for a moment, before she whipped out a pair of wire cutters. In a few seconds, she had cut a big enough hole in the fence for the two of them to squirm through. They found themselves crouching behind a hut, and they smiled at each other.

"Part One of the plan's a complete success," muttered Rachel. She had known for years that whispers, with their hissing, carried farther than a murmur. She could easily hope that the normal sounds of the Kampuchean night would cover her voice.

"Now for Part Two," Garcia answered, in the same low murmur. "Finding and taking out the alarm systems." They had been selected for this because they were the smallest people available; Rachel was even a little smaller than Fabiola, and Garcia had insisted on coming along, refusing to let a girl go into danger alone. Rachel smiled to herself. Garcia's attitude sometimes exasperated her, but at other times, she thought it was very touching. She had never had anybody much looking out for her; even Rebecca tended to expect her to be able to fend for herself in most ways.

Both of them hushed as two soldiers went by, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish and paying no attention to the shadowy area where they were crouching. Rachel felt frustrated. She had thought she was middlin' fluent in Spanish, but the soldiers' slangy speech and Cuban dialect was beyond her. She gave Garcia a helpless look.

"They have no idea we're anywhere nearby," Garcia muttered. "They were talking about two blonde children. What children would be doing anywhere near here is beyond me. They sounded frightened for some reason." Garcia looked as puzzled as Rachel felt. _What __would__ children be doing anywhere near them_? Of course, Rachel did not count herself, or Garcia, as children. She had heard more than enough about Garcia's adventures to know that he had left childhood behind long ago, and she considered herself fully adult in most ways.

The two friends scuttled from shadow to shadow, until they got to the shack where the main controls for the electronic security that protected the camp were housed. There was a guard on duty, but Rachel didn't worry about him; he was sprawled in a chair, and she could smell the stink of bootleg rum on him from ten feet away. She gestured Garcia forward, and soon they were inside. She grinned at her new friend. This was fun! Rachel couldn't understand why Roberta, the bigger, older maid, didn't seem to enjoy this sort of thing for its own sake. _Outwitting people, slipping past them, and getting what you wanted…there was nothing like it in the world! Straight citizens' lives are dull, dull, dull!_

Garcia pulled out a set of manuals that had been sitting by the controls. "I should be able to figure these out quickly enough. No offense, Rachel, but even though your Spanish is good for everyday stuff, I don't think you have the vocabulary to deal with technical manuals."

"None taken. You're the native speaker. That's one reason you're along." Rachel went over beside the door, pulling out her trusty PPK, while Garcia bent over the manuals, muttering to himself in Spanish.

While she was watching, Rachel flashed back to her days in New York, when she'd been a valuable asset to several burglary teams. With her small size and agility, she could squeeze through in places where an adult couldn't reach, and once on the inside, she could open gates and doors so that her partners could enter. She had also learned about alarm systems, and could deal with many of the more common ones. These, however, were well above her level of expertise. Better to let Garcia figure out how to defeat them.

After a few minutes, Garcia looked up, giving her a gleaming smile, and she felt her knees going slightly weak. "I think I have it. Let me try to take things down. If I've got this right, we can have the electronic defenses down without anybody even knowing what we've done."

Rachel continued to keep watch, quivering with tension, as Garcia sat down in the chair and began throwing switches. The humming of the electronics changed subtly in tone and lights began blinking in different patterns than they had been doing earlier. Garcia watched intently, all his attention focussed on the controls.

After a few minutes, Garcia pushed his chair back, wiping sweat from his brow. "There. That should have done it. Let's call the others." Suiting his action to his words, he pulled out a pocket-sized walkie-talkie they had been equipped with, since the Cambodian jungle did not have many cell phone towers. "Garcia to _Black Lagoon_, come in, please. Over."

The little radio crackled with static, then, much to Rachel's relief, Benny's voice came over the air. "_Black Lagoon_ here. We read you loud and clear, Garcia. What is your status? Over."

"Mission accomplished. The gate is open. Preparing to extract. Over." Hearing the words "preparing to extract," Rachel felt a rush of relief. She always got tense on a job, and didn't really relax until it was over, but knowing that they had done what they came to do was a big load off her mind. _The others were on their way, and it wasn't all on her and Garcia's shoulders any more! _Rachel Lee was by no means lacking in confidence, but she was quite aware that she still was thirteen years old. When she forgot, the wounds she had taken aboard the North Korean freighter _Cheonji_ tended to twinge to remind her.

"Come on. Let's get on out of here." Garcia nodded, and they both crept to the door, peering out cautiously. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything. Just before they crept out, Garcia leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She stared at him, and he looked back at her as though she expected her to hit him for his temerity. She winked at him to reassure him. _Once we're alone, Garcia…I'll show you how to really kiss_! Rachel had learned a lot of things in her years on the streets.

They scuttled through the door, heading for the nearest shadowy spot…when suddenly a pair of shadows just about their own size stepped out to block their path.

"Well, well, what have we here, _dragul miu frate_?" The voice was clear and pure, like a bell, or like what Rachel thought an angel would speak like. Its owner, a beautiful blonde-haired girl in an old-fashioned black dress, stepped forward, leveling a Thompson submachinegun at the two infiltrators.

"I don't know, _draga mea soră_. Maybe they're just thieves." The other shadow, a boy just the same size as the girl, with the same white-blond hair and dressed in the same sort of old-fashioned mourning clothes, came out, looking closely. Peering at Garcia, he shook his head. "No. I don't think they're just thieves. This boy is no Cambodian, and now that I look at her closely, the girl isn't, either, for all that she _is_ Asian." Suddenly he produced a huge axe, swinging it up to bring it down in a lethal slash.

The girl put out her hand. "No, _dragul miu frate_! We've got to get information out of them, and we can't do that if they're dead!" Her expression went sorrowful. "Seems like such a pity…two nice victims, and we need to keep them alive!" She let out a piercing whistle, sticking her fingers into her mouth to produce it. For a second, Rachel considered the option of making a grab for the Thompson, but the blonde girl was just far enough out of reach to make it an impractical plan.

Cuban soldiers appeared, covering Rachel and Garcia with their Kalashnikovs. Both of them raised their hands, not fancying the odds against them. Rachel saw that Garcia had unobtrusively activated the small electronic gadget on the side of his belt, sending a signal to the _Lagoon_ that they had been captured. It also would help their friends track them, and was difficult enough to see that there was a good chance that their captors would miss it.

To Rachel's secret relief, their captors did not seem to be interested in mistreating them. They were briskly frisked, her pistol was taken, but the search was not particularly rigorous and things like her set of lockpicks were still in her possession when the two of them were unceremoniously bundled into a shack and locked in.

Garcia looked like he wanted to say something, and Rachel signalled for quiet. She leaned close, and said: "Don't talk too loudly, in Spanish or English. I wouldn't put it past those bastards to have someone outside listening in, or to have this place bugged. Just sit tight, and keep cool. Our friends will be here directly."

END Chapter 07


	8. Chapter 8

Four Pirates, A Little Lady and Love

Chapter 08

_(Sorry about the long delay; I got caught up in other projects.)_

Revy Two-Hands and the two maids moved through the forest, with Dutch and Rock not far behind. They had received the signal that the electronic protections on the Cuban camp had come down, and that Garcia and Rachel were trying to extract. Then they hadn't been able to raise the younger people, and Roberta was worried.

"Why haven't we been able to contact them?" she fretted.

Fabiola put a hand on her mentor's shoulder. "They might be in a tight spot, and not willing to risk calling us. Don't worry so, Roberta. I'm sure Garcia's just fine." She turned to Revy. "And that goes for your sister, too, Rebecca."

Revy scowled. "My baby sister's like a cockroach, and just about as easy to kill," she grumbled. "I'd bet on her surviving a nuclear holocaust, and she'll bring your precious Garcia out in one piece." Then Revy grinned wickedly. "She has her own reasons to want to do that."

Both maids gave Revy a glare. Revy smirked; she knew that the Lovelace family maids considered her to be on the level of something scraped off the bottom of their shoes, and she was sure that attitude extended to her little sister. She was confident that she could handle either or both of the maids, if it came down to it, and if they dared to harm Rachel, she'd take great pleasure in teaching them the error of their ways, at length and in detail. Rachel, and Rock, were the two people she would always protect. She'd gone a long time alone in the world, and it felt good to have people to care about.

After a while, the little group came out to a place where they could see the Cuban camp. It was brightly lit, and there were guards patrolling here and there, but it didn't look particularly like there had been any alarm. "Looks like we can just stroll on in," murmured Roberta.

"I'd better let you two take point," Revy conceded reluctantly. "My Spanish isn't bad, but nobody would mistake me for a native speaker."

Roberta nodded. While she detested the Chinese gunsel, this was serious business and no time for private quarrelling. Seeing that Revy could be professional about things shamed her; she hadn't earned the nickname of "the Bloodhound of Florencia" by being less than on top of her game, and she wasn't about to be outdone by a mere street rat!

There was a patch of jungle close to the outer perimeter of the camp, and the infiltrators moved into it. Dutch muttered: "I'll stay behind here. I don't have enough Spanish to pass." Rock moved forward; his Spanish was fairly fluent, and in his fatigues, he could easily pass for a Cuban soldier, at least at first glance.

A lone Cuban soldier approached them, his rifle slung over his shoulder and his mind clearly a million miles away. He was whistling what Revy thought was a love tune. "How about we grab this one and see what he can tell us? It'll save us a lot of trouble once we go in."

Roberta nodded. Casually, as though she had every right to be there, she sauntered out of the bush and up to the soldier. He saw a pretty woman in what looked a lot like Cuban uniform, and altered course slightly, putting a little strut into his stride. Revy grinned. He was about to get a lot more than he'd ever bargained for!

Emiliano Escobar was in a good mood. He'd been able to get ahold of a good dose of locally-made popskull, and not even knowing that he was thousands of miles from home and at the doubtful mercy of a couple of insane children who had the complete backing of his superiors could dent his buzz. He needed to empty his bladder, and didn't feel much like going clear across the camp to the latrines.

Seeing a pretty comrade ambling up to him casually improved his mood. After he got done, he was by no means averse to a little comradely fellowship between soldiers. The _soldadas _who had come with them from Cuba were often very friendly; mores in Cuba were loose since the _Revolucion_, and they were all equipped with the latest birth-control implants.

"Good evening, comrade." He didn't recognize the _soldada_, but that meant little. There had been an influx of new people ever since their project had started showing real promise. He smiled at her, but she regarded him from behind a pair of round glasses as solemnly as a judge.

"Will you pardon me for a second, comrade? Afterwards, I'd be pleased to answer any of your questions about this camp." She nodded, and he went farther toward the bush. He stepped in…and all of a sudden he felt like he'd been hit by a bolt of lightning.

When he came to, he found that he'd been expertly bound; he was barely able to wiggle his fingers and toes. The _soldada_, along with what looked like a couple of other _soldadas_ and several _soldados_, was standing over him, and all of a sudden she did not look very alluring. Almost all of them, save one of the _soldados_, were holding menacing-looking guns all aimed straight at him.

"What's your name, soldier?" Her accent was also wrong. It wasn't Cuban; near as Emiliano could tell, it was from somewhere in northern South America. It reminded him of Colombians he had met. "What's your unit?"

"First Special Infantry. Who are you? Let me go!"

"Not so fast, soldier. We're here for that scientist you have here. Where is he?"

"Also, have you seen two teenagers?" This was the other _soldada_, who was shorter than the first one and didn't wear glasses. "A blond boy and an Asian girl?"

"Two teenagers?" For a sickening second, Emiliano thought that the intruders, whoever they were, meant those awful children who terrorized him and his mates. Then the description sank in. Neither of those two were Asians! He knew where the teenagers they wanted were, and opened his mouth to say…and then had a stunningly good idea.

"Two teenagers? Yeah, I know where they are." Emiliano gave his captors a very precise description of exactly where they could find the twin towheaded terrors. _Let them get shot up, and welcome_! he thought. No matter who won that fight, it would gratify him enormously.

"Good. Now, where is that scientist?" The strangers made notes, speaking among themselves in a language Emiliano couldn't follow. He thought it might be English, but he had no real talent at foreign languages. The sheer rapidity of their speech would have likely defeated him even if he'd studied their language in school.

"He's over there, in the main compound. I don't know where he is right at the moment." At this, all but one of his captors turned to leave, and Emiliano found himself alone with the one unarmed enemy. If he'd been tied less securely, he might have tried something, but he couldn't do anything, and relaxed, knowing that whatever happened, he was out of the fight.

The intruder smiled. "My name's Rock, soldier. Would you like a smoke?" At Emiliano's nod, Rock put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a no-glow lighter. Emiliano noticed that his accent, although good, was not that of a native speaker.

Meanwhile, Revy, Roberta and Fabiola marched across the compound as though they had every right to be there. Roberta had had lots of experience in infiltration when she was with FARC…_ Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionario de Colombia_…and Revy was an experienced criminal who knew fully well that acting furtive was one good way to get the police to pay attention to her.

They got to the hut where they thought the scientist was; there wasn't a guard on duty, since he was in the middle of a Cuban encampment and thousands of miles from home anyway. Slowly and carefully, they cracked open the door. And shut it again, much more quickly.

"We weren't expecting him to be doing that!" Revy muttered, too low for eavesdroppers to overhear. For the first time since she'd known her, Roberta grinned, looking, for a second, very much like an impish young girl out for mischief instead of a stolid, imperturbable killing machine-cum-maid.

"I should have thought of that. The man's a genius, but his motto is 'Anything female!' I do think he'd hump a rock pile if he thought there was a female snake under it!" Fabiola gasped, and then blushed bright red, amusing Revy enormously. The younger maid was still an innocent in some of the ways of the wicked, wicked world, or so it seemed.

Finally, after a while, the man they had been sent to get came out, whistling happily and putting his clothes to rights. He spied the three "soldadas," and smiled the smile of a child on Christmas spying a pile of presents.

"Good evening, beautiful ones. I haven't seen you around before. Are you here from Cuba…" Then he clearly recognized Roberta, and his eyes went wide with shock. Before he could say anything, Revy was behind him, and had a gun pressed into his ribs.

"Don't make any sudden noises. We're here to take you back to Venezuela." Revy was as twitchy as a cat at a dog show, and was eager for this op to be over. They were being paid well, but still, there was the chance for everything to go pear-shaped. She was also worried about her sister, although she'd never have admitted it openly.

"Back to Venezuela? Count me in!" With that, the four of them began to amble across the compound, trying to look like a friendly group out together. Revy was straining every sense she had, wondering when, and whether, the balloon would go up, and where her sister was.

As they passed a nondescript hut, she heard a familiar voice, singing a song.

END Chapter 08


	9. Chapter 9

Four Pirates, A Little Lady, and Love

Chapter 9

by Technomad

Revy's eyes went wide. That was Rachel, for sure! She loved to croon rock-and-roll songs to herself, particularly when she had nothing much to do. Revy signalled to Roberta and Fabiola, quirking her eyes toward the hut.

"Do you think they're in there? Could that soldier have been lying to us?"

Roberta's eyes narrowed, consideringly. "Not impossible, I'd say. That flat, out-of-tune voice sounds remarkably like your sister, and nobody in the world loves Guns n' Roses as much as she does." Revy gave Roberta a hard look, but this wasn't the time for a quarrel. Consideringly, she studied the situation. The hut was guarded, but the _soldado_ on guard wasn't exactly alert. She and Roberta could take him easily, if they needed to.

Just then, a musical voice from behind them startled Revy, and she whirled, to find herself staring at something that shocked her to the depths of her being.

"Oh, my God…they're dead…they were supposed to be dead…I saw her die…"

"What are you babbling about, _loca chica_?" hissed Roberta. "You're acting even crazier than you usually do!" Then Roberta saw what had spooked Revy so badly. "_Madre de Dios_, are you afraid of _children_?" She began to giggle, which was about as expected from Roberta as it would be from Balalaika.

"Of _those_ children? Damn _right_ I'm scared!" Roberta looked at Revy closely. She disliked the Chinese gunslinger, but had never doubted the other woman's courage. If Revy was scared, whatever it was was worth paying attention to, at least. Roberta focussed intently on the children.

There were two of them, a boy and a girl, and at first glance, they looked utterly angelic. They had long, white-blonde hair, and were dressed in what Roberta thought was charmingly old-fashioned clothing, rather like formal mourning. The girl was carrying something or other wrapped in a blanket.

Roberta watched as they walked casually across the clearing, as though they didn't stand out from their surroundings like two sore thumbs. As she watched, the two children addressed a soldier, who was clearly terrified by them. _Perhaps_, thought Roberta, _there was something to this_?

Drawing Revy aside, Roberta hissed in her ear: "If there's something about those children that frightens you, tell me what it is! And, for the love of all the saints, at least try to act like we're two girlfriends sharing a secret!" Fabiola leaned closer, intent on not missing out on whatever was going on.

Revy whispered: "Those two kids shot up Roanapur worse than either of you ever did! They all but wiped out one of the mobs…the Italian mob, that had brought them there in the first place! We'd thought they were _dead_! Balalaika reported that her snipers killed the boy, and I know I saw the girl die! She was shot in the head, right in front of my eyes!"

Now, _this _was disconcerting. People who could survive being shot? Of what use would Roberta's skills be against _them_?

Revy's eyes went wide. "Oh, shit, they're coming this way! And they know me…at least, the girl does! She ought to, after I punched her out for tormenting Rock!" That, at least, didn't surprise Roberta. She had noticed that one of the things that could rouse Revy's never-distant furies was any threat to the Japanese man.

Before they could hide, the two towheaded children were confronting them. Staring into their grey eyes, Roberta felt a shiver of fear. There was something there…something she couldn't put a finger on, but that sent alarm bells ringing in her subconscious.

"_Dragul mea frate_, look! We've had a visit from an old friend!" purred the girl. "I remember her from that boat I was on!"

"Is she the one who was so nice to you, _dragul mea sora_?" The boy looked up at them, his expression wide-eyed and guileless, at least on the surface.

"Oh, yes!" The girl unwrapped the cloth-wrapped object she carried in her arms, and to Roberta's horror, it turned out to be a Thompson submachine gun with a 100-round drum magazine. "I do miss my BAR, but this is a very nice substitute, and less clumsy to carry!"

The boy smiled gently, his smile turning into a predatory leer. "Shall we play with them?"

"Let's do so!" The girl leveled her Thompson and triggered a short burst. Roberta had been waiting for that, though, and jumped out of the way…almost directly into the boy's axe. It missed her, but only just; the blade tore her uniform and she thought she could feel the metal against her skin for a second.

"Oh, yeah! Let's rock!" With that, Revy pulled her pistols and began shooting, first at the two strange children, who proved to be surprisingly elusive, and then at the Cuban soldiers who had come running to see what was going on.

_Oh,_ Dios mio, _the fat's in the fire! _Roberta pulled her own guns and began shooting. Cubans screamed and fell, the smarter ones taking cover and shooting back. It was like the old times again, and for a second, before she remembered that she was now a reformed person, she revelled in the feeling.

While she despised Revy Two-Hands, she had to allow that the Chinese-American gunsel was a real expert with her twin Berettas. Revy was laying down a barrage that nobody seemed to be interested in facing, but the two children who had precipitated the gunfight were nowhere to be seen, and Roberta wondered where they had gone.

Inside their makeshift prison, Rachel and Garcia sprang into action when they heard what was going on outside. "That's Roberta!" Garcia gasped. "We've got to help her!"

Rachel wasted no time. She had seen how the door could be forced with what was in there, and grabbed a handy heavy stick, twisting it in the doorframe to pop the door open. The hut hadn't really been intended as a very secure prison, and breaking out was surprisingly easy. She and Garcia slipped out, taking in the scene of combat. Fabiola was just outside the door.

"Garcia! Rachel! Come on with me! We've got to get out of here!" The maid grabbed them both and hauled them toward a strange man. "Is this the man we were sent after?"

Garcia nodded. "That's him!"

Rachel looked him over curiously. He didn't seem like much of a much to her, but she reflected that many of the most dangerous criminals didn't look like they were all that dangerous. Garcia explained: "Fabiola never met him."

"Doctor Jaime Zapatero, at your service…very much at your service, ladies!" He gave them a gleaming smile, and Rachel suddenly felt her knees go a little weak. She shook her head angrily. _This was no time to go drooling over men! Not in the middle of a firefight!_ She shoved Dr. Zapatero over to Fabiola, and scampered to see what her crazy sister had found to do.

Between them, Revy and Roberta had managed to fight the Cubans themselves to a standstill, and many of them had taken the better part of valor, hiding out and staying out of the firefight. "They're mostly draftees," Roberta panted, as they paused for a second to reload. "They mostly didn't want to be here!"

"Once an idealist, _always_ an idealist," Revy retorted, slapping the magazines into her Cutlasses and grinning like a skull. "They want me to stop shooting them? Let them throw their rifles away and put their hands on their heads!" She peered around. "Also, I want those two brats' heads! I won't feel safe till they're dead!"

Rachel came up behind her sister and the chief maid very carefully…and found herself sneaking up behind the two towheaded children she'd seen earlier. She snarled. _Those brats ratted us out_! Then she saw, to her horror, that the girl was carrying a tommy-gun, and was raising it to take aim at her sister! Instinct took over, and she leaped on the girl like a cat on a mouse, shrieking "Rebecca! _Look out_!"

Revy had forgotten about Rachel for the moment, but she whirled…just in time to avoid a deadly axe-swing from the blond boy. She gave a horrified scream of rage, blazing away with one of her Cutlasses. The damned brat was incredibly elusive, though, dodging her bullets with what struck her as contemptuous ease.

Meanwhile, the blonde girl and Rachel were in a snarling catfight, rolling around on the ground and struggling to get control of the Chicago Typewriter. Several times, one or the other girl managed to trigger it, sending short, random bursts out in all directions. Roberta gasped as one of them sang right past her ear. She leveled her gun, only to have her arm knocked away by Revy. "Don't shoot! That's my sister!" From the look Roberta gave her, Revy was fairly sure that that hadn't mattered a whit to her, and she promised herself a long talk with the Colombian woman, preferably with fists.

The blond boy had also been tackled, by Garcia Lovelace, who was struggling to get the axe away from him. Both boys were snarling what sounded like dog's abuse at each other; Revy didn't know any Romanian, but the bits of Spanish she could catch told her that while Garcia Lovelace might have been a rich kid, he could curse like any street brat.

While this was going on, a few of the Cubans had regained their courage, and started shooting. Luckily for Revy and her companions, Cuban standards of marksmanship were by no means high, and Revy and Roberta were able to suppress them with a few well-placed shots of their own.

Everybody had forgotten Fabiola…until she appeared, bent nearly double under the weight of a tied-up man. She dumped him down in front of Roberta, with the air of a cat bringing a mouse in to its owner. She spoke in rapid-fire Spanish.

Roberta's eyes went wide behind her glasses. She answered Fabiola and patted the younger maid on the head. "That's the Cubans' commander," she deigned to explain. "With him in our power, the rest of the Cubans will probably listen to reason."

Revy nodded, as Roberta turned to yell at the Cubans. Whatever she said seemed to get through, since the remaining Cubans shouted answers and began retreating, melding into the forests surrounding the camp. However, that left those two blond monsters to deal with.

By this time, despite their undoubted courage, both Rachel and Garcia had gone down to defeat. Garcia had been pummeled into submission and appeared to be semi-conscious at best, and Rachel was just jumping back as the blonde girl gained full control of her Thompson, swinging it around to take aim. While Rachel had her PPK out, it looked pitifully inadequate compared to the tommy gun.

Revy screamed in rage, blazing at the blonde girl with both her Cutlasses. For some reason, her usual fine marksmanship had deserted her; the girl easily eluded her bullets, sending a burst at her that forced her back. Roberta got into the fight, cursing vividly in Spanish and shooting at the blond boy.

Despite the best both women could do, the twin terrors survived, skipping backward and laughing merrily. Finally, though, they faded into the jungle, and Roberta gestured Rachel closer. "Can you see to Garcia, Miss Lee?" she asked. Revy raised an eyebrow. She had never heard "Glasses Bitch" be so polite to any member of her family before, and she wondered if that meant she was coming to respect Rachel. _Naah, never happen…she'll always think that our whole family's trash_!

Just then, a shot rang out from the surrounding forest, and Revy felt something like a hammer hitting her side. She wondered what had happened, as she felt herself falling.

Rachel screamed with fury, turning to blaze away in the direction the shot had come from, before running to her sister's side. Before she could do more than kneel, she was pushed aside firmly by Roberta. "No offense, _senorita_, but I've had experience dealing with these things. Both with _FARC_ and afterward." Rachel didn't know _FARC_ from a hole in the ground, but she could tell that the Colombian woman knew what she was doing. She'd cut Rebecca's shirt open and was applying pressure to the wound.

"Come on! We've got what we came for! Let's make like trees and leave!" Rachel had forgotten that Rebecca was the only other native English-speaker in the group; all of the Latins, even Garcia, stared at her as though she'd said something utterly insane. However, the word "leave" got through, and they were soon moving past the camp perimeter, into the safe, welcoming jungle. Rebecca was being carried by Roberta in a fireman's carry, and the camp commander was being hustled along by Fabiola, who encouraged him to move with a pistol in his ribs. Dr. Zapatero was in the middle of the group, but appeared to need no encouragement; he kept up easily, hardly seeming to breathe deeply.

After a short trip through the trees, they came out to the waterside, where the _Black Lagoon_ was waiting. The gangplank was down, and they all hurried aboard. The boat seemed to be deserted, and Rachel looked around suspiciously.

She peered down the companionway into the main cabin…and leaped back with a cry of horror. Dutch, Rock and Benny were down there…and so were those two towheaded horrors from the camp! The girl was covering all three of the men with her Thompson, and the boy looked up at her with a predator's leer, fingering his axe.

END Chapter 09


	10. Chapter 10

Four Pirates, a Little Lady, and Love

Chapter 10

by Technomad

"Come on in," the blonde girl said, her voice sounding like what Rachel thought an angel might sound like. "Don't be shy! We're all friends here, after all!"

Slowly, keeping their hands where the two terrible children could see them, Rachel, Revy, Roberta, Fabiola, Garcia and Dr. Zapatero entered the cabin. Rachel was calculating the odds, and a glance at her sister told her that Rebecca was doing the same…and that both of them were coming to the same conclusion. They were between a big rock and a very hard hard place, and this wasn't the time to try fighting back.

"Oh, you can dump your weapons on the deck. _Dragul mea frate_ will take care of them!" the girl carolled. "You'll get them back later. _If_ you're good!" She hefted the Thompson slightly. "And if not…" She giggled, as though she'd just heard a delightful joke.

They were covered, and while she hated it, Rachel knew what to do. She carefully laid her PPK on the deck, and noticed that Rebecca was doing the same thing with her precious Cutlasses, and the maids were also divesting themselves of various firearms. The boy gathered them all up carefully and stowed them in a handy locker, spinning the lock so that it couldn't be opened easily.

"What do you want? How'd you get back here so quickly?" That was Roberta. Rachel disliked the South American woman, mostly for her sister's sake, but she had never discounted the senior maid's courage.

"What do we _want_?" the boy asked. He laughed, sounding like a tipsy cherub. "What a silly question! What does the Black Lagoon Courier Company _do_?" He answered his own rhetorical question. "They provide transportation! And transportation is just what we want right now!"

"We're tired of the Cubans. We've got a better offer elsewhere, and the _Black Lagoon_ can take us there. I had a nice time riding aboard it before…with a _minor exception_ or two," the girl purred, giving Revy a look that should have had her lying dead on the deck. "This time we shouldn't have such troubles, now _should_ we?" She gave them all a sunny smile, and Rachel felt like her guts were turning to liquid inside her. Their beauty seemed to conceal something fundamentally wrong, like a mask over putrifaction.

"So, you just want a ride out of here?" Dutch took control of the conversation. As captain of the _Black Lagoon_, and Main Man of the Black Lagoon Courier Company, he generally handled business negotiations, albeit often with Rock's assistance. "Where you planning to go?"

"We've got an offer from the rebels in Sarawak. That should be well within your range."

Dutch looked thoughtful, then nodded. "Perfectly do-able. And you're paying…just _how_?"

"Oh! You want to know what _you'll_ get out of this!" The boy and girl looked at each other and giggled. "How does 'your miserable lives' sound? Is that good enough?"

Dutch raised one eyebrow. "I have no choice. You have a deal."

"Good!" For a second, the two children looked very grim indeed. "And this time, let's hope there aren't any little _glitches_. I don't _think _you had anything to do with that nasty little betrayal on the docks, but I didn't appreciate it." The girl smiled again, this smile looking like a hungry ghoul, and casually shifted the Thompson to a different position.

"That came of meddling with Balalaika. She's got tentacles all over Southeast Asia, and she was able to predict where we'd come ashore. No matter where we'd put you ashore, she would have had someone waiting for you. That woman holds grudges forever, and after they die, she stuffs and mounts them in her trophy room, to discourage others."

"Oh, what fun! We'll have to go back to Roanapur some day! Won't she be pleased to see us?" The boy laughed out loud. "And this time, we won't be involved with those stupid Italians!"

"We can strike and kill her before she even knows we're around! There's nothing like being thought to be dead to make it easy to move around easily, isn't there, _dragul mea frate_?"

"Oh, yes! And I've wanted to kill her even before she hurt me so badly!" The boy looked at his hand. "Getting this reattached and working wasn't easy! Good job we're both part mechanical, isn't it?"

"What?" Rachel couldn't keep quiet. "You're both…mechanical?" She couldn't believe it. She and the girl had been tussling in the dirt, and apart from having much greater strength than Rachel had expected, the girl had seemed like any other girl. "You're cyborgs?"

Rock and the Latin Americans stared at her. "What is a _cyborg_, Rachel?" asked Garcia.

Rachel spread her hands apologetically. "Sorry. I forgot you aren't native English speakers. A cyborg is someone who's part human and part robot."

"Oh! That's a good word! Thank you, whoever you are! Now, can we be on our way before the Cubans recover and start wondering where we've gone?"

Dutch nodded. "Sounds like a plan. This neighborhood really isn't healthy. Rock, Revy…could you cast us off?" Silently, Rock and Revy went out on deck to unmoor the _Black Lagoon_ so that she could head back out into the river. A deep rumble from the engine room told everybody that the boat was about to get under way. In a few minutes, the _Black Lagoon_ was backing out into the river, before Dutch could turn her around to go downstream. Benny went forward and manned his electronic sensors; the night was dark and full of terrors, and he knew that Dutch would want any foreknowledge he could get of what was out there.

Rachel's stomach rumbled. "I'm hungry," she muttered. "What do we have on board to eat?"

"That sounds like a good idea," said Garcia. "How about the rest of you?" A chorus of grunts and nods answered him, and he went on: "Rachel, why don't we go get some food together? Where's the kitchen?"

Rachel glanced at their two new passengers, who nodded. "Down here, Garcia…and we call it a _galley_. A lot of things on ships have different names in English from what they do on land. I don't know just why." Garcia nodded, absorbing the information in that solemn way he had. It was one of many things about him that Rachel found endearing.

Rock came down to join them. He had put himself in charge of preparing meals at sea, after sampling Revy's "cooking" once too often. That had met with general approval; Dutch had commented that if Rock ever gave up the sea, he could open a café in Roanapur and have lots of customers.

"What's available?" asked Rachel. She began opening cupboards. "Let me see…"

Garcia opened another cupboard. "Oh! Is this the medicine cabinet?" A small plastic bottle fell out as the _Black Lagoon_ smoothly turned a corner in the river. "What is this?"

Rock took the bottle, and his eyes lit up. Then he smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. Rachel shivered; she'd seen that smile before, and usually it meant that someone was in for it.

About half an hour later, with nice smells from the galley pervading the cabin, dinner was being served. Involuntarily, Revy, Dr. Zapatero, the two maids, and the twins perked up. It had been a long time since any of them had eaten, and Rock had done his usual excellent job putting things together.

With a slight flourish, Rachel put down plates in front of their passengers. "Passengers eat first. That's the rule!" Meanwhile, Garcia served the others; Roberta and Fabiola looked slightly uncomfortable at this reversal of roles, but when he winked at them, they subsided. Soon everybody in the main cabin was tucking into food.

Rachel went up to the bridge. Dutch smiled down at her. "Hello, little lady. Any chance of me getting fed, being the captain and all?"

Rachel shook her head. "We hadn't planned on more passengers, and food's just a bit short. Just wait, and Rock'll have enough more cooked up for us. We figured we'd best get the others fed first."

Dutch nodded. "Good idea. Once we're out to sea, I can turn the helm over to someone else, and take a meal break. That sound all right to you, too, Benny?"

Benny's voice drifted up from his lair. "Sounds good, Dutch!"

A little while later, everybody except Dutch, Benny, Garcia, Rachel and Rock had finished their meal. The blonde girl smiled. "Thank you! That was very nice!"

The boy nodded. "We grew up eating horrible slop in the place where they raised us, up in the grey mountains. Life was difficult there."

"Sounds like juvie, doesn't it, Rebecca?" Rachel remarked. Revy nodded, spooning up the last of her meal and licking her lips. "One thing I did whenever I got out of juvie was head straight for a restaurant."

"What is this word 'juvie?'" Both of their passengers looked puzzled.

"It's what we call juvenile detention. Sort of kiddie jail. Both of us were in and out of it back in New York." Revy's face clouded as unpleasant memories passed through her mind.

"Oh, we weren't in anything like that. It was a sort of orphanage. That's where we had the modifications we now bear put in. It was a project of the government's; we heard that it was to counter something the Italians were doing." the blonde girl explained. A sad expression flitted over her face. "It was cold there. And lonely."

"The things they did were quite uncomfortable. But they taught us how to do what we now do. It's a good way to make a living, we've found." The boy smiled.

"Where _was_ this?" asked Fabiola. "And…forgive me…but what are your names?" She blushed slightly. "It's a little uncomfortable, not knowing what to call you."

"Forgive our manners!" the girl smiled. "You may call me Gretel. My brother, here, is Hansel. They aren't the names we were born with, but they'll do."

"We're from Romania. We were in a government program there, under Nicolae Ceaușescu. When the program was ended after Ceaușescu fell, we started working free-lance." Hansel explained.

"But…that was years ago! How is it that you're so young?" Rock asked. "You couldn't have been older than five when the Romanian government changed!"

"We don't know." Gretel let out a howling yawn, and her eyelids began to drift shut. "As far as we can remember…we were always the way we are now." She slumped over on Hansel's shoulder; Hansel was already dead to the world.

Rachel looked around. Roberta and Fabiola were asleep in each other's arms; Rachel had to giggle at the way Fabiola snored. Revy was stretched out on her side, looking unwontedly peaceful. She and Garcia nodded at each other. Rock winked, giving them a triumphant, evil smile.

The three walked up to the bridge. "Oh, Dutch…you can set a course for Roanapur. The situation's back under control." Rock's casual statement startled the captain.

"What? I'll need to see this for myself! Rock, take the helm!" Rock saluted and took over the controls as Dutch headed below to check up on his human cargo. When he came back up, the big black man was clearly nonplussed.

"I can't believe it! How'd you do it?" Rock gave that evil grin again, and pulled out the small plastic bottle from his shirt pocket. He handed it to Dutch, who read the label, his eyes visibly going wide behind his glasses.

"What is that stuff, Rachel?" whispered Garcia.

Before Rachel could answer, Dutch, who had overheard them somehow, provided the answer. "It's a date-rape drug. We had some on board from the time we were transporting some people who, let us say, didn't want to be carried along. I guess this must have been left over."

Rachel smirked triumphantly. "I guess some people just can't hold their roofies. Right, Rock?"

"You got it, Rachel!" Rock gave her a thumbs-up as he steered the _Black Lagoon _towards her home harbor.


	11. Chapter 11

Four Pirates, A Little Lady and Love

Chapter Eleven

by Technomad

_Roanapur, Thailand_

It was a quiet, routine day at Bougainvillea Trading. Balalaika, the head of the firm, was engrossed in some niggling paperwork, the bane of her life since she had graduated from her military academy in Russia, before Afghanistan, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, before her life had taken so many unexpected turns. It was nothing she wasn't used to, but it was tedious. She welcomed the interruption when her faithful right-hand man, Sergeant Boris, stuck his head in.

"Comrade Captain? There is a delivery here for you. From the _Black Lagoon_."

Now, this was completely unexpected, but not unprecedented. Sometimes her contacts out of town sent her things, and the _Lagoon_ was, as always, for hire to anybody who had the money. "Who is with it?" she asked, putting down her pen and shutting down her computer.

"Dutch, and Rock."

"I shall see what it is. Keep Dutch and Rock close by. If this is some sort of a trap, their reactions will tell me in advance." Balalaika rose and walked out of her office, graceful as a hunting cat.

Rock and Dutch were standing beside a big box in the main office, both of them looking like cats that had eaten canaries. "Well? What is this that you have brought me?" Balalaika was intrigued. Her relations with the _Lagoon _crew had always been good, but this was the first time they'd ever approached her. Always, in the past, she had approached them.

"We brought you a present. Sort of a way of saying 'thank you' for all the times you've hired us." Dutch rumbled. He stepped forward, holding out a cheap little trophy with the words "World's Best Client" on it.

Balalaika was utterly nonplussed. "Well, thank you, I guess. And what is this?" She pointed to the box. If it had been possible, Dutch and Rock would have looked even more triumphant.

"Open it and see!" Mystified, Balalaika took out her knife and opened the box. When she saw what was inside, she stepped back, gasping in sheer shock. Wrapped in enough duct tape to keep them immobilized, Hansel and Gretel were staring out at her, their eyes glazed as though from drugs.

"_Bozhe moi_! But they're dead! I saw him die! How…what…" Balalaika was not often caught wrong-footed, and decided quickly that she did not like the sensation. She whirled on Dutch, her eyes narrowing menacingly. "Tell me how this is possible!"

"It appears that our two _friends_, here, are cyborgs. They were created by the Romanian government, as a counter to a program the Italians apparently had. After the Ceausescu regime fell, they escaped and went to work as freelance assassins."

Rock took up the tale for his boss. "The stuff you found over at Rowan's place probably was about another pair of twins that looked like them. You do remember that the quality on those films was pretty grainy, don't you?"

"Ye-e-s-s-s…" Balalaika was now looking very thoughtful. "And being cyborgs would explain a lot about them, wouldn't it now? How in the world did you capture them?"

Rock grinned like a devil. "They'd been hired by some people from Cuba as security for a project they're running over on the Kampuchean side of the border. You know that things are wild and wooly there, and the Cubans wanted to do their project far from the prying eyes of the United States."

"I can see their point," Balalaika conceded. For her, as for all of her men, the US had always been the Main Enemy…the enemy they trained to fight, but hoped never to have to actually fight. "So how did you get involved?"

"They'd stolen some technology, and an important technician, from our old friends the Lovelaces, so the young Lovelace heir came back to town and hired us. We got them up into Kampuchea, and we and they cooperated to extract their man. There was a firefight, and we managed to capture these two. They were not easy to take."

Balalaika had not been born yesterday, and she gave Rock and Dutch a gimlet stare. "How interesting. And just _how_ did you capture them?" She didn't have to say "the truth, this time," but she didn't need to. Both Rock and Dutch knew her well enough to know the signs.

"They got on board the _Lagoon_; we hadn't been expecting them any more than you did, just now. Who expects people that you're sure are dead to pop up, alive? Before we could do anything, they got the drop on us, and when the raiding party came back, they were in the bag, too." Dutch explained, looking slightly sheepish. Balalaika quirked a grin. She had clearly not expected such an admission from Dutch, of all people.

"Once we were all there, they said they wanted us to take them out of there. They said they had an offer from some other people, and they wanted to hire the _Lagoon_." Rock took up the tale. "They said that they would give us something we really wanted for our services. 'Our miserable lives,' to quote them directly."

"How did you turn the tables?" asked Balalaika. She was interested. It was very seldom, if ever, that anybody successfully got the better of Dutch and the _Black Lagoon_ crew, and while she was on excellent terms with them, she figured that knowing how it could be done would be useful information if they ever came to a serious parting of the ways. Or she could use the same trick on someone else sometime.

"Garcia and Rachel…Revy's little sister, you remember her…" Dutch explained, and Balalaika nodded. Like everybody else in Roanapur, she had found it quite amusing to see Revy Two-Hands, one of the least child-friendly people in town, having to adapt to being a big sister. "They thought it would be nice to have something to eat, and went down the galley to rustle something up. One of them found a bottle of roofies, and they laced the food with that, which knocked everybody out but good."

"Roofies?"

"Ruphynol. A powerful knockout drug. We had it for that time when we were carrying some people who didn't want to come along." Balalaika raised an eyebrow. "Revy, Benny and the maids are all of them up at our office, off in dreamland."

"So you brought them to me. I do thank you. I have plans for these two." Balalaika smiled. Her smile would have looked about right coming out of a dark forest. Or on a hungry tiger.

"Ma'am…before you do anything rash, I'd suggest you call Moscow. These two are cyborgs, remember? Your government will probably want to take them into its custody." Rock was diffident, but determined. "I don't know if the Soviet, or now, the Russian government has any such program, but if they don't, they'll want to, I think."

Balalaika nodded. "You're exactly right, Rock. And I won't ask how you happen to know so much about the secret world." Ignoring the twins' glares, which should have left her lying on the floor with a smoking hole in her chest, Balalaika pulled out a cell phone and punched in a long number. When she got an answer, she began a rapid-fire speech in Russian.

Whatever answer she got, it impressed her. She snapped to attention, holding the phone right up to her ear. When she put the phone down, she looked very pale.

"Let us say that I was put straight through to a very important individual. And, yes, the authorities in Moscow are very, very interested in examining these two. There is a very large reward for them or people like them. You and I shall split it evenly." She named an amount that had Rock gasping, and even the normally unflappable Dutch was visibly impressed. "I'm so glad that you're happy. You may leave now. I shall take charge of these two."

When everybody was awake back at the Lagoon Company offices, the news brought on a celebration. "Of course, we'll split our half of the take with you," Dutch told Garcia, ignoring Revy's unhappy scowl. "You were in on the capture, and we couldn't have done it without you."

"Gracias!" Garcia Lovelace grabbed Dutch's hand and shook it. "You're a true gentleman, Dutch!"

"Just keeping up good business practice. You're more than welcome here any time you bring in that much profit." Rock was over in a corner, adding up how much they'd made, and his eyes went very wide.

"By the way," drawled Benny, "I seem to remember a bet between our Revy, here, and Roberta. Who won?"

Rachel's eyes went wide, and the room went very quiet. "We don't know," Roberta finally admitted. "We got out of there before we could do post-mortems. How can we know?"

"Good question, that."

"I wonder who it was that Balalaika was talking to?" ruminated Dutch. "Whoever it was, it had to be someone really important. She doesn't react that way to just any jumped-up Jack-in-office."

"I could hear and understand just enough to figure it out," Rock explained. "I'll give you a clue. It was the Man on the Cracker."

"The Man on the Cracker?"

Rock began whistling a popular tune, and Dutch gasped. "That's 'Puttin' on the Ritz!' You mean she was talking to…_him_?" Rock nodded. "I always thought there was more to her than met the eye, but this is something new!"

The others in the room were very quiet. Rachel finally broke the silence. "I'll have to remember to be extra nice and extra careful around her from now on," she said, apparently to herself. "She's got connections!"

"Well, it does make sense," Fabiola remarked. "How better for Russia to keep an eye on this part of the world, and have a bunch of their special-forces types right close by if they need them, than to make them look like Mafiya? And if they bring in _valuta_, that's extra money. I've never known anybody who would turn up their nose at money."

"Speaking of money," Roberta said, "I believe we owe you Lagoon people for your hard work. Will this do?" She hauled out a wad of bills and passed them to Dutch, who counted them rapidly. Dutch broke out in a big smile.

"On these terms, you're always welcome to hire us! And I think we should celebrate. Who's for the Yellowflag?" This brought general approval, and all of them trooped off to the Yellowflag. Rock did make sure that most of the money was safely deposited before they hit the bar, though.

A few days later, Sister Eda came by. "Hi, Revy! I got hold of the after-action reports the Cubans sent back to their homeland!"

"Let me see!" Revy grabbed for the papers that her friend held out to her. "Hmm, let me see…there were two people winged with a .380. That's Rachel. She's the only person I know who carries one who was along. Five were killed with 9mm Parabellum. That's me. And…_how many_ died of wounds from a .45 ACP?" She set the papers down, looking distinctly sick.

"Hey, what's the problem? Dead is dead, isn't it?" Eda pushed her pink sunglasses back on her forehead. She gave Revy a worried look. For all that they snapped and quarrelled, they were each other's closest friend, and if there was something wrong, Eda wanted to know.

"Glasses Bitch and I had a bet on. Whoever killed fewer enemies had to serve the winner dinner. Dressed in a maid costume!" Revy looked as though she had just swallowed poison. Eda visibly wanted to whoop with laughter, but everybody in the room knew that laughing at Revy at this point would likely be fatal. Even Rock and Rachel kept their silence, for all that they were suppressing grins.

And, that evening, Roberta Cisneros, maid to the Lovelace family of Venezuela, sat down to a luxurious meal in a private room at Roanapur's most upscale establishment. Waiting on her hand-and-foot in a "French maid" costume, Revy Two-Hands poured her drinks, carved her meat for her, and cleared away plates between courses. Her expression was thunderously mutinous, but she carried off the role as well as though she'd always served the wealthy. Roberta, for her part, was scrupulously polite, preceding each request with a "Please," and ending with a "thank you."

Rachel and Garcia both watched, wide-eyed, from their own table. Until they decided that the novelty had worn off, and went back to staring at each other. Roberta and Revy both glanced over, giving their young charges warning looks to not let things go beyond a little footsie under the table.

At the "men's table," Rock, Benny, and Dutch all shook their heads. They would treasure this moment forever, and remember it the next time Revy got stroppy.

THE END


End file.
